As water beds have become more commonplace and more and more people are experiencing the restful attributes associated with water beds, several undesirable characteristics associated with water beds have arisen. For example, in a conventional bed using box spring and mattress one can easily sit on the edge of the bed for a desired purpose and may easily enter and exit the bed by reason of the lateral edges being somewhat rigid.
In the case of the conventional water bed, it is difficult to enter and exit the bed because of the substantial resilience of the lateral edges and while the prior art has suggested the utilization of pneumatic or solid foam plastic members along two or more lateral edges, these members have been retained inside and within the water mattress per se. While this has helped alleviate the difficulties with regard to entering and exiting the water bed, nonetheless serious other drawbacks remain.
For example, the non-resilient lateral edges change the bouyancy characteristics of a water filled mattress and in the prior art, once obtained, the substantially more rigid edges remained during use of the water bed. Additionally, manufacturing techniques have been necessarily complex because of the fact that the support members were secured within the water mattress and one desiring to convert an existing water bed structure to one having reinforced lateral edges would incur great expense in having to discard an existing mattress.
With the herein described invention, a conventional water bed may be converted to one having substantially more resistant or less deformable lateral edges than the remainder of the bed and wherein, once situated on the water mattress, the relative hardness or softness of the edge portions may be selectively changed and/or controlled depending upon the desired end result. Additionally, because the reinforcement members of the invention are external of the water mattress, expensive manufacturing techniques are not necessary and further, servicing of the reinforcing members is easily obtained as opposed to prior art structures which would necessitate gaining access to the interior of the water mattress per se.